


the best laid plains

by thejabberwock



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Post-SPECTRE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 05:57:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9586835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thejabberwock/pseuds/thejabberwock
Summary: Q doesn't realise what he's lost until James leaves with Madeleine. But following them to the hotel where they're staying might not have been his best idea.





	

Q takes a breath as he considers the door where Bond and Madeleine are presumably sequestered. It didn’t take much effort to find them, or to program a blank key card to open the lock.

Bursting in, however, is probably a terrible idea, not least because there’s no telling what they could be doing. The thought of the two of them in bed together makes his stomach curl. Bond wouldn’t even be here if Q hadn’t rebuffed his every effort to have something more than just sex.

Who knew James Bond craved intimacy enough to leave everything behind for its promise?

And isn’t Q a dick to come here now, to tell him how he feels.

He should leave. Go back to London and forget he was stupid enough to let him walk away. Let him be happy with Madeleine. Bond deserves that–happiness with someone who isn’t afraid of their feelings.

This is wrong.  Stupid and wrong and utterly shitty.

With his throat tight, Q shoves the key card back into his coat pocket. But before he can turn away, the door opens and he finds himself face to face with the barrel of Bond’s gun.

It’s lowered immediately, a gruff curse breaking the silence.

Q blinks rapidly. He can feel his face growing hot, apologies catching in his throat as he stares.

Bond runs a hand through his hair, longer now than when he left a month ago. He looks gorgeous, with the hint of morning stubble at his jaw. His chest is rising and falling too rapidly, a sheen of sweat across his skin and that makes the mortification worse.

It doesn’t help that Bond doesn’t look happy to see him.

As he fumbles for something to say, Bond sighs. “I should have known they’d send you.” He steps back, opening the door wider in invitation–resigned though it seems to be.

Unable to look at him, Q steps inside, mind racing as he tries to come out with a plausible reason for being here. A mission of some sort, since that’s clearly what Bond thinks. That he’s here to entice him back to MI6.

It would be an easy enough to lie and yet the only thing Q can think to do as Bond closes the door is to gesture vaguely. “Where’s…”

“Madeleine? I’ve no idea.”

Q frowns again. “But…”

“She left.” Bond’s smile is full of bitterness, although Q wonders if he even realises.  He wants to ask why he hasn’t come home yet, wants to admit how stupid he’s been. Instead he watches Bond reach for a bottle of vodka. 

“I already told Mallory I’m not interested.” 

“Interested?” 

“In helping with unraveling the rest of Spectre…” Bond’s eyes narrow. “That’s not why you’re here.” 

“Erm, no.” Q shifts. He really hasn’t thought this through. “I wanted…” Frustrated, he gestures jerkily. “I thought Madeleine would be here.” 

“And you wanted to join in? You do surprise me, Q.” 

“No, that’s not…” But Bond is smirking, using teasing as a defense. A tactic Q understands well.  He takes a fortifying breath, squares his shoulders, which is difficult with the strap of his computer case cutting him across his chest.  “I came here to tell you I was an idiot.” 

Bond looks even less amused than when he first saw Q.  He turns away, catching a glass with sharp movements.  Q stares at the haphazard pattern of freckles across his back as he pours. 

He’s wanted to trace those freckles so many times, pressed over James’ back as they fucked. Kiss them one by one.  But that’s never what it was about between them. No matter how much Bond wanted it to be. 

Q never considered what rejection might feel like. 

“Why did she leave?” he asks, voice strained by the ache in his throat.  

Bond drinks a measure of the vodka before he answers, the bitterness roughening the words, “That’s what they do.” 

Technically, it was Bond who left, but Q’s guilt apparently doesn’t care about technicalities. 

“I’m not leaving.” 

“Mm.” Disbelief in one chord.  Bond sets the glass down, the bottle along with it and turns. The bitterness is gone, replaced for amusement. “You came all this way for a fuck? You don’t like to fly.” 

“I didn’t come just for a fuck.” 

Bond returns to his drink.  Q watches him swallow, watches his throat and  _wants_. Wants to press his lips to the freckled skin, to mark it with his teeth.  To prove to him that he means to stay this time.  Give Bond whatever he wants.  

Give him everything. 

“I shouldn’t have let you leave,” he says, his voice thick with regret. “But I didn’t realise…” 

The words stick in his throat.  Of course they do.  Bond finally looks up, watching him with the same still expression he wore after he told Q, unasked, that he wasn’t sleeping with anyone else. After Q told him there was no need to change anything–no need to change himself. 

It was only a week later that Bond brought Madeleine into the hotel room Q had assumed would be put to better use than research. He had assumed he would be well fucked by morning. 

An assumption gone terribly wrong. 

But Madeleine is gone now,  _this_  hotel room empty save for the two of them.  And Bond isn’t refusing him outright.  What more is there to lose, really?

"Would you have stayed?” he asks. “If I had asked you to?” 

Bond drinks another mouthful of vodka. “Does it matter?” 

Q swallows back the immediate need to say  _of course it matters_. But it only takes half a second to realise he’s wrong about that as well. “No,” he says quietly. Whatever he felt for Madeleine, Bond is here now, and he doesn’t look like he has any intention of retreating. 

No inclination, even now, for self-preservation. For the first time, Q is grateful for it. 

He crosses the carpet, and when he’s close enough to pull Bond in, Q kisses him like a homecoming.  There’s no hesitation, no indication that Bond won’t give himself just as freely as he has since the beginning. A masochist in every sense of the word.  

It takes only a few moments before the kiss grows heated, before Bond is divesting him of both the case over his shoulder and his bulky coat. Before there’s nothing between them; only skin and heat and slick sweat as their cocks slide together. Slow and quiet and easy.  Just like every other time they’ve done this, and nothing like it at all. 

Nothing like those other times. 

Not when Bond’s lip skim his jaw, up to his ear, voice low and rough and sincere as he says, “I would have stayed.” 

Q slides their fingers together, grips him tight and holds on.


End file.
